Tag: war crimes

To cover for war crimes, Israel claims it ‘lost control’ over soldiers

Several months after media commentators began predicting a “strategic defeat” for Israeli forces in Gaza, Israel’s military high command is claiming it has lost control over various units in their armed forces. 

The argument appears to scapegoat occupation soldiers to provide plausible deniability for their superiors and dissociate them from war crimes charges. The vast body of evidence emerging on these alleged ‘rogue Israeli units’ could potentially lead to a damning indictment of Tel Aviv’s military leadership.

Despite the International Court of Justice’s (ICJ) recent call on Israel to halt its military operation in Gaza’s southernmost city of Rafah, Israeli Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu remains resolute in his vow to invade, even while personally facing an International Criminal Court (ICC) arrest warrant. Marred by internal division and pressure to comply with the ICJ order, Tel Aviv finds itself in a precarious position.

‘Rogue units’ in the occupation army 

Hebrew-daily Haaretz dropped a narrative bombshell last weekend when it claimed that the Israeli army’s “General Staff lost control over the units, especially reserve units, months ago.” The article attempts to depict a situation in which Chief of Staff Herzi Halevi has just “woken up” to the reality of allegedly rogue elements operating under his watch, with these ‘uncontrolled units’ committing the crimes cited by the ICJ against Israel.

Throughout the war in Gaza, Israeli soldiers have been publishing evidence of themselves committing crimes, showing genocidal intent, and performing perverse acts while operating inside the besieged coastal territory. 

These incriminating clips, published primarily on TikTok and Instagram and also within Telegram groups that glorify the killing of Palestinian civilians, have attracted a lot of bad press. It appears that Israel’s leadership is now floating the “few bad apples” strategy to absolve their military high brass of accountability.

It won’t be easy. Some of these social media groups are run by occupation officials. Furthermore, the Israeli military establishment has admitted to running accounts on Telegram that showcase snuff films as part of a psychological warfare operation under the “Operations Directorate’s Influencing Department.”

Keep reading

Logic of a Forgotten American Atrocity Is Alive Today

In March 1906, U.S. forces attacked a group of Moros and killed more than 900 men, women, and children at the top of Mt. Dajo on the island of Jolo in the southern Philippines.

Even though the death toll was higher than at well-known massacres committed by American soldiers at Wounded Knee and My Lai, the massacre at Bud Dajo has been all but forgotten outside the Philippines.

Recovering the history of this event is the subject of an important new book by historian Kim Wagner, Massacre in the Clouds: An American Atrocity and the Erasure of History. The book is a masterful reconstruction of the events leading up to the lopsided slaughter on the mountain, and Wagner sets the massacre in its proper historical context during the age of American overseas colonialism at the start of the 20th century. It also offers important lessons about how the dehumanization of other people leads to terrible atrocities and how imperial policies rely on the use of brutal violence.

In the years leading up to the massacre, the U.S. had been extending its control over the southern Philippines after it had annexed the northern islands and defeated local pro-independence forces in the Philippine-American War (1899-1902). U.S. relations with the Sultanate of Sulu were initially regulated by the Bates Treaty of 1899, but within a few years the U.S. abrogated that treaty and sought to impose direct rule. The U.S. tossed the treaty aside on the recommendation of Gen. Leonard Wood, who was the local military governor based on Mindanao at the time.

The massacre was part of a larger history of violent American expansionism, and it was the result of an imperial policy that sought to impose colonial rule on the Philippines. The U.S. effort to collect the cedula tax provoked significant resentment and opposition among the Moros. (The Moro name was the one given to the Muslim Tausugs of the Sulu archipelago by the earlier Spanish colonizers, and it was the one that the Americans continued to use.)

Keep reading

Drafter of Leahy law says it was never applied to Israel

Following immense pressure from Israel and its most fervent supporters, the Biden administration announced recently that it will keep giving weapons to five Israeli units that had committed “gross violations of human rights,” including a notorious battalion whose soldiers killed an elderly Palestinian-American man in the West Bank in 2022.

The decision drew sharp backlash from legal analysts and former officials, who noted that the State Department’s own experts had found the units in violation of the “Leahy law,” a 1997 statute that is supposed to stop foreign militaries from using U.S. weapons in war crimes.

In a sense, the move was standard. Israel has long been able to dodge U.S. laws surrounding arms transfers, and it even gets a special process for Leahy vetting that leaves more room for political interference, according to a former State Department official.

Indeed, the Biden administration has shown little public interest in holding Israel accountable for alleged war crimes even as Israel begins its assault on Rafah, where more than 1 million Palestinians have sought shelter amid the war. While the White House has reportedly held up a pair of weapons transfers in recent days, it’s carefully avoided giving a reason for the move, leaving open the possibility that the delay was caused by logistical problems.

Tim Rieser brings a unique perspective to these issues. During a long tenure as an aide to former Sen. Patrick Leahy, Rieser drafted the law that Israeli units now stand accused of violating. Today, he’s pushing for real enforcement of U.S. policy on weapons transfers as a senior adviser to Sen. Peter Welch (D-Vt.).

In an email exchange, RS asked Rieser about whether the Leahy law has ever really been applied to Israel and why policymakers should care. The following conversation has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Keep reading

Crackdowns on Protests Are Exposing Higher Ed’s Complicity in Israel’s Genocide

As the Palestinian death toll in Gaza and the West Bank mounts daily, campus protests against Israel’s genocidal war on Gaza continue to spread across the U.S., where students and faculty often face police crackdowns. Student activists from Pomona Divest from Apartheid in southern California, The Coalition for Mutual Liberation at Cornell University in Ithaca, New York, and Resist WashU in St. Louis, Missouri, told Truthout the blows landing hardest are the ones from their own chancellors and deans. The activists say university administrators are waging an asymmetrical campaign of enforcement against students demanding an end to their schools’ complicity in the slaughter of Palestinians.

“We see Pomona for what it is: serving capital and empire. And we know the way to win our demands is to disrupt their flow of cash, disrupt their reputation,” said Amanda Dym, a 21-year-old humanities student at Scripps College, one of the five colleges in the Pomona consortium. “We won’t allow our administrators who facilitate and defend investments in an apartheid state to go about their work undisturbed.”

Dym was among 20 students arrested by cops in riot gear during a sit-in outside Pomona President G. Gabrielle Starr’s office on April 5.

“A televised genocide live-streamed on our phones is obviously unlike anything that’s happened in our lifetimes,” she said. That’s why Dym and others were moved to demonstrate, but she says when Starr called in the riot police, the president put them in a whole other category of risk.

“Obviously, it was a scary day, to watch 30-plus riot cops from three cities come in and start bringing my comrades out, one by one,” Dym told Truthout. “The cops were in full gear with automatic weapons, bigger guns than some of us had ever seen. They were yanking students up off the ground, zip-tying their hands so tightly they were losing circulation.”

Keep reading

News of Mass Graves Isn’t Much News to US Outlets

The bodies of over 300 people were discovered in a mass grave at the Nasser medical complex in Khan Younis, a Gaza city besieged by Israeli forces. The discovery of these Palestinian bodies, many of which were reportedly bound and stripped, is more evidence of “plausible” genocide committed by Israel during its bombardment of Gaza. Over 34,000 Palestinians have died thus far, with more than two-thirds of the casualties being women and children (Al Jazeera, 4/21/24).

Yet this discovery prompted few US news headlines, despite outlets like the Guardian (4/23/24), Haaretz (4/23/24) and Reuters (4/23/24) covering the story. Instead, headlines relating to Palestine have predominantly focused on protests happening at university campuses across the country—an important story, but not one that ought to drown out coverage of the atrocities students are protesting against.

Israel’s Haaretz noted that

emergency workers in white hazmat suits had been seen digging near the ruins of Nasser Hospital. They reportedly dug corpses out of the ground with hand tools and a digger truck. The emergency services said 73 more bodies had been found at the site in the past day, raising the number found over the week to 283.

The bodies included people killed during the Israeli siege of Khan Yunis, as well as people killed after Israel occupied the medical complex in February (Guardian, 4/22/24). They were found under piles of waste, with several bodies having their hands tied and clothes stripped off (UN, 4/23/24; Democracy Now!, 4/25/24). Similar mass graves, containing at least 381 bodies, were found at Gaza’s Al-Shifa hospital after Israel withdrew from occupying that complex on April 1 (CNN, 4/9/24).

The discovery of these mass graves “horrified” UN rights chief Volker Turk (Reuters, 4/23/24). But it has yet to prompt so strong a reaction from several major US news outlets.

Keep reading

The Shift: Does the White House care about mass graves?

Does the Biden administration care about mass graves?

More than 300 bodies were recently discovered at the Nasser Medical Complex in Khan Younis and the UN says it found more at Gaza City’s al-Shifa Hospital.

“Among the deceased were allegedly older people, women and wounded, while others were found tied with their hands…tied and stripped of their clothes,” explained UN High Commissioner for Human Rights Ravina Shamdasani.

State Department spokesperson Vedant Patel was asked about these atrocities at a press briefing this week. Of course, The White House finds the situation “troubling” and “disturbing.” They take this kind of stuff “very seriously” and will continue to engage with the Israeli government on the issue.

When pressed about actual accountability, consequences, or investigations Patel quickly pivoted to a cascade of bureaucratic bilge.

He told reporters, “When it comes to the security relationships that we have with countries around the world – whether it be Israel, whether it be any other country where we have a robust security relationship – the applications and standards of the laws that guide that security relationship, including the laws and procedures that guide accountability measures that are in place within our system to ensure that human rights are not being violated, to ensure that American assistance is being used properly, the laws and guidelines and standards of those are applied consistently across the board.”

Obviously, none of this means anything. Israel will continue to receive military funding from Biden regardless of what it does to Palestinians. The President just signed a $95.3 billion aid bill, which includes another $17 billion in weapons for Israel.

Keep reading

Play in Israel, just don’t pretend you didn’t know

Since October 7, scores of writers have authored scores of columns pleading – to no avail – with prominent politicians who wield transformative power to stop the genocide unfolding with such obscene lethality in the apocalyptic remnants of occupied Gaza.

The same dynamic applies to a gallery of preening artists who claim that they are not only allergic to conformity, but also reject as tantamount to censorship any call from any quarter not to entertain audiences in Israel.

Rather than beseeching Nick Cave, the Australian troubadour, or the British band, Radiohead, finally to heed the petitions of Brian Eno, Roger Waters and company and forgo performing in an apartheid state, my aim here is to challenge their, by now, discredited defences to opt to play in Tel Aviv.

After not performing in Israel for some 20 years, in 2014, Cave refrained from signing on to an artist-organised pledge – meant to show tangible solidarity with imprisoned Palestinians – to boycott touring in Israel in the aftermath of yet another Israeli killing spree in Gaza.

Cave later explained his decision this way: “There was something that stunk to me about that list. Then it kind of occurred to me that I’m not signing the list but I’m also not playing Israel and that just felt to me cowardly, really.”

The lobbying, Cave added, constituted a “public humiliation” that apparently fuelled his determination to spurn the overture and stage shows in Israel.

“It suddenly became very important to make a stand against those people that are trying to shut down musicians, to bully musicians, to censor musicians, and to silence musicians … so really you could say in a way that the BDS made me play Israel,” Cave said, referring to the Boycott, Divestment, Sanctions movement.

In this flattering construct, Cave is the portrait of the principled renegade resisting the “age-old” rejectionist forces bent on muzzling him and, by extension, his art.

In a 2017 letter to his “hero” Brian Eno, the British musical savant behind the boycott drive, Cave insisted that he was not a supporter of the Israeli government to blame for the “injustices suffered by the Palestinian population”.

And yet, like the Israeli government he distances himself from, Cave recycled the stock canard to discredit the BDS movement by claiming that “the boycott of Israel can be seen as anti-Semitic at heart”.

Keep reading

Doctor at Israeli Detention Camp for Gazans Blows Whistle on War Crimes

A doctor at an Israeli field hospital inside a notorious detention center where hundreds of Palestinian prisoners are temporarily held is sounding the alarm about torture and horrific conditions at what some human rights defenders – including Israelis – are calling “Israel’s Guantánamo Bay” and even a “concentration camp.”

In a letter to Israel’s attorney general and defense and health ministers viewed by Haaretz – which reported the story Thursday – the anonymous physician describes likely war crimes being committed at the Israel Defense Forces’ Sde Teiman base near Beersheva. Palestinian militants captured by IDF troops, as well as many civilian hostages ranging in age from teenagers to septuagenarians, are held there in cages, 70-100 per cage, until they are transferred to regular Israeli prisons or released.

“From the first days of the medical facility’s operation until today, I have faced serious ethical dilemmas,” the doctor wrote. “More than that, I am writing to warn you that the facility’s operations do not comply with a single section among those dealing with health in the Internment of Unlawful Combatants Law.”

Keep reading

Close-up of Death Culture: 1,000 in Entertainment Biz Proclaim Support for Gaza Slaughter

Last week, Variety reported that “more than 1,000 Jewish creatives, executives and Hollywood professionals have signed an open letter denouncing Jonathan Glazer’s ‘The Zone of Interest’ Oscar speech.” The angry letter is a tight script for a real-life drama of defending Israel as it continues to methodically kill civilians no less precious than the signers’ own loved ones.

A few ethical words from Glazer while accepting his award provoked outrage. He spoke of wanting to refute “Jewishness and the Holocaust being hijacked by an occupation, which has led to conflict for so many innocent people,” and he followed with a vital question: “Whether the victims of October the 7th in Israel or the ongoing attack on Gaza, all the victims of this dehumanization, how do we resist?”

Those words were too much for the letter’s signers, who included many of Hollywood’s powerful producers, directors and agents. For starters, they accused Glazer (who is Jewish) of “drawing a moral equivalence between a Nazi regime that sought to exterminate a race of people, and an Israeli nation that seeks to avert its own extermination.”

Ironically, that accusation embodied what Glazer had confronted from the Academy Awards stage when he said that what’s crucial in the present is “not to say, ‘Look what they did then,’ rather, ‘Look what we do now.’”

But the letter refused to look at what Israel is doing now as it bombs, kills, maims and starves Palestinian civilians in Gaza, where there are now 32,000 known dead and 74,000 injured. The letter’s moral vision only looked back at what the Third Reich did. Its signers endorsed the usual Zionist polemics – fitting neatly into Glazer’s description of “Jewishness and the Holocaust” being “hijacked by an occupation.”

The letter even denied that an occupation actually exists – objecting to “the use of words like ‘occupation’ to describe an indigenous Jewish people defending a homeland that dates back thousands of years.” Somehow the Old Testament was presumed to be sufficient justification for the ongoing slaughter of Palestinians in Gaza, most of whose ancestors lived in what’s now Israel. The vast majority of 2.2 million people have been driven from their bombed-out homes in Gaza, with many now facing starvation due to blockage of food.

Keep reading

Torture, Executions, Babies Left To Die, Sexual Abuse… These Are Israel’s Crimes

Hostages tortured to death. Parents executed in front of their children. Doctors beaten. Babies murdered. Sexual assault weaponised.

No, not Hamas crimes. This is part of an ever-growing list of documented atrocities committed by Israel in the five months since 7 October – quite separate from the carpet bombing of 2.3 million Palestinians in Gaza and a famine induced by Israel’s obstruction of aid.

Last week, an investigation by the Israeli newspaper Haaretz disclosed that some 27 Palestinians seized off Gaza’s streets over the past five months are known to have died during interrogations inside Israel.

Some were denied medical treatment. But most are likely to have been tortured to death.

Three months ago, a Haaretz editorial warned that Israeli jails “must not become execution facilities for Palestinians”.

Israeli TV channels have been excitedly taking viewers on tours of detention centres, showing the appalling conditions Palestinians are kept in, as well as the psychological and physical abuse they are subjected to.

An Israeli judge recently called the makeshift cages in which Palestinians are held “unsuitable for humans”.

Keep reading